I struggled to find my WHY (until someone asked me this question)

"What is your WHY?"

I see this question time and time again in books, blogs, Instagram posts, and YouTube videos.

I hear this question time and time again when roaming around fellow entrepreneurs at events, mentor program sessions, and co-working spaces.

It seems to be the question when starting a business or a side hustle.

But how do you identify your WHY? I've seen many different tactics and prompts to help you get more clear on this:

What is your purpose? What are you destined to do?

Some people believe in ready-made scripts for life. Well, I don't believe in destiny. I don't believe I'm put on this earth for one specific reason, and one reason only.

What is your passion?

I have so many different passions that light me up and give me energy. Surf, travel, building stuff, festivals, designing simple solutions, helping people grow.

A broad mix - not something that should be crammed into one business.

What is you IKIGAI? The intersection between what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, what you can be paid for

I like the concept, and I enjoyed reading the book, but it assumes clarity in all four boxes - which most people, including me, don't have.

Then a girl in my mentoring group flipped the question and asked:

What pisses you off?

Now that's a question that works well with my Scandinavian roots. To be honest, Scandinavians are world champions in complaining. And though I try my best to restrain from doing so, it seems to be usful for me in this scenario... So, what pisses me off?

When smart, motivated people waste their time on nonsense - because systems, processes, or habits weren't designed with simplicity in mind.

I hate when things are overly complicated. When processes, rules, and regulations get complex and loose sense of the original purpose.

It pisses me off to see people waste their time on trivial and admin work instead of doing what they are best at - and why they started the business in the first place. Often because they lack the skills or time to take a step back and consider how to do things smarter, or whether they even should be doing that thing at all.

It frustrate me to see:

• A patch work of steps added to the process because one or two edge cases occurred one time
• Project plans created from scratch every time
• Hours wasted on email ping-pong for something a shared document or workflow could solve
• Inconsistent customer onboarding because each employee has their own way of working
• Founders working 24/7, at the verge of burnout

Most often people know some things could be done smarter, but they are too busy putting out fires.

They know that some tasks should be outsourced, but they don't feel confident doing so, because how do you ensure the same level of quality as when you do it yourself?

I have seen it everywhere - NGOs, public and private, tech consultancies, startups, mom & pop shops.

This pisses me off. And it would give me great joy and pride to fight this. To help busineses run like a well-oiled machine - built on structured data, strong systems, and the discipline to cut the fluff. Automate what can be automated, delegate what should be delegated. Ultimately allowing people to spend time on what they truly excel at and where they create the most value.

So, dear founder, if you are stuck in the machine room instead of the cockpit let's talk!